Peggy Noonan Hates Both Choices
For 20 years this column has had at the back of its mind fear of a terrible and immediate crisis that could befall America from its foes. We have seen Mr. Trump’s crisis management in one that unfurled not over minutes but months. Last February I wrote I had a feeling the 2020 election was being settled then, that Mr. Trump had finally met a problem he couldn’t talk his way out of. I believe that’s what happened: He played down the pandemic, lied, made uninformed claims at briefings that serious people were struggling to keep useful. He produced chaos. The country can’t afford any of that in a crisis that is sudden and severe. He would only be worse, more dangerous, more careless, in a second term.
You look at that White House and you know nobody’s really there inside. It’s a hollow government mostly populated by second- and third-rate people, with the seasoned and competent fired and fled. It’s all so dangerous.
A vote for him is not possible for me.
But why not Biden? He seems normal. But, she says, “normal” is not “normalcy,” and we’re not going to have normalcy for a long time. More:
The Democrats in their current construction are animated and being pushed internally by a progressive left that punches above its weight and numbers, and will continue to do so until it achieves full party dominance. In the next few years, especially if Democrats have the Senate, the new administration looks to become a runaway train with Joe Biden its hapless and reluctant conductor.
The progressive left endorses and pushes for the identity politics that is killing us, an abortion regime way beyond anything that could be called reasonable or civilized and on which it will make no compromise; it opposes charter schools and other forms of public school liberation; it sees the police as the enemy, it demonstrates no distinct fidelity to freedom of speech and, most recently, its declared hopes range from court packing to doing away with the Electoral College and adding states to the union to pick up Senate seats. The left is animated by a spirit of historical vandalism seen most lately in the “1619 Project” and the attitudes it represents.
Read it all, if you have a subscription.
I agree with this diagnosis, though as of right now, two days before the election, I’m planning to vote third party (the American Solidarity Party). There is no way I can vote for Joe Biden; to do so would empower the worst people in America, people who already hold all the high ground in key US institutions. It would be to empower people like this fanatical Boston Globe columnist:
Note well that Renee Graham isn’t some women’s studies professor at a Seven Sisters college. She is a featured columnist at one of the most influential newspapers in America. And she sees no difference between supporters of the sitting US president, and an army of Islamist berserkers who rape, pillage, and murder. If you, like me, read The New York Times and Washington Post daily, you know how the ruling class thinks, and what they have in store for the rest of us. Noonan is right: Biden is going to be the “hapless and reluctant conductor” of this runaway train.
I agree with Noonan’s view that Donald Trump is a bad man who has been a bad president. Unlike with her, it is possible, slightly, that I could vote for him, solely because I deeply fear the Democrats in power, for reasons that all readers of this blog will understand. Because my state’s vote is safely in Trump hands, my presidential vote doesn’t really matter. I have the liberty to vote my conscience instead of my fears, which is why I plan to cast a third-party vote for the American Solidarity Party. (I intend to vote Republican for House and Senate.)
But let me ask you Trump voters: what would you say to me, in my circumstances (that is, here in a safely Trump state), to convince me to vote not third party, but for Trump? Serious question. And let me warn you: if you have nothing to say but insults, not only will I not post your comment, you may find yourself banned. I’m asking for a serious argument from you on the question.
Whoever wins, I expect the next four years to be terrible for America. Things aren’t going to feel “normal” for many years.
UPDATE: A Czech émigré reader emails:
1948 – Václav Benda – PinochetI said it before and I am saying it again: this is not the time for occupying moral high ground.
It seems to me that, given what you have to say about Biden and the Democratic Party, you should boldly vote for Trump and announce that vote on your blog. Unless I am somehow missing what you are saying in your post, that’s what you would recommend your unsafe state readers do. You seem to associate the word “safe” with Trump. Can you say with absolute certainty that Louisiana will go with Trump, and that, due to that fact, you can indulge an idealistic third party vote? I don’t think you can, and I don’t think that, based on polling data, voter registration, or whatever, that anyone can predict anything with absolute certainty.I voted for Marco Rubio in the primary election in 2016, and I would still much rather have him as president than Trump. But, based on analyses I read after that election, I became convinced that he would have lost the general election decisively. I reluctantly voted for Trump, because he seemed to be such a protean force, and I wasn’t sure which direction he would go. (Do you remember when–at Oxford, I believe–Jimmy Carter told students that he preferred Trump out of all of the Republican candidates, because he had no fixed ideology?) I have already voted for Trump in this election with no hesitation whatsoever. (My ISideWith test results had Trump come in at 75% and Biden at 46%.) At least over these past four years, he has come down decisively on our side. Sure, I’m embarrassed by his silly tweets, I’m disgusted that he never came forth with the “great” healthcare plan (for many years, I have preferred a bare-bones national healthcare plan funded by taxes which allows for private insurance and plug-ins provided as perks by employers) and I, as a Republican, opposed the Republican tax plan which Trump supported. (I believe we need to raise taxes AND reduce spending to deal with the deficit and debt. I think Republicans are stuck in the Reagan Era, which is over. Circumstances have changed, and they require a different approach.) But, overall, it seems to me that Trump has done a decent job against almost impossible odds. Before he could even take office, he was under attack from everyone– from a vengeful John McCain (with his promotion of the spurious Steele Dossier) to the partisan left-wing media conglomerate to crazy, vengeful, out-in-the-cold Never Trumpers (including the fools involved with what would become the Lincoln Project, et al) to, naturally, the Democratic Machine.Sure, one could argue, I suppose, that it might be best for Trump to lose now, so that a better Republican team (I would like to see Nikki Haley and Tim Scott) could rise up in 2024. But, the damage that could be done between now and then simply boggles the mind.
Until the very last second I had cold feet on voting for Trump. I could have written your blog posts for you, so similar was my thinking. When you mentioned the American Solidarity Party, I thought I had my out. But an interaction with my daughter and a run in the woods finally persuaded me that I needed to do something far more difficult, and cast my vote for Trump. I hope this might help you in your own struggle.
It started with a talk with my 4th grade daughter, who attends the local Christian school. She mentioned that they aren’t allowed to talk about the election in class; the reason she gave was that the teachers told the students “different people like different candidates and so we don’t want to offend”. I was a little surprised at this; how are we supposed to stand together on anything in this country if we can’t have reasoned discussions about our differences, and ignore and avoid each others’ perspectives? With that in mind, I wanted to explain to my daughter why we felt the way we did about the presidential candidates, my wife (who was definitively voting Trump) especially.I told her there were three main reasons we preferred a Trump presidency over Biden:1) Trump supports religious freedom more than Biden. The Leftists driving the Democratic Party are overtly anti-Christian, to the point that they would force believers to deny their faith, violate their consciences, and ultimately destroy the Church from within, in part by forcing religious organizations to hire people with no intention of honoring orthodoxy. I calibrated this to my fourth grader by saying, “We prefer Trump because he wants to let Christians be Christians, but many of the people who support Biden don’t think religion is as important as politics and they don’t want to allow Christians to do certain things.”2) Trump has opposed—at least through policy and judicial nominations—abortion, while the Democratic Party and Biden strongly support it. In fourth-grade terms, “Some people don’t think a baby is really a human being worth protecting and loving while in the womb. We believe that baby is fully human and fully loved by God. Biden and the people that support him don’t believe this, and we can’t support that.”3) Trump is not actively hostile to western institutions, including the role and reality of gender in the human experience, the importance of marriage, and even the family itself. The people that support Biden are at best ambivalent about these things, and sometimes actively hostile. While perhaps a minority on the far Left, they have disproportionate power and a huge amount of influence in the public discourse. To my fourth grader, “Trump isn’t attacking families and marriages, but some of Biden’s supporters think these things are bad and should be done away with, and we have to fight to protect them.”In my mind, those are the 3 most important reasons why Trump is better. But that was not enough to warm my cold feet, and I was still contemplating not voting or voting 3rd party. This was on my mind as I went for a long jog through the woods, praying for guidance as I went. These runs have a way of clearing and focusing the mind, a form of meditation free from petty distraction and the tyranny of the mind. One could say the channel to God is clearer during such activities, and I prayed: “Lord, what should I do?”I thought about my reasons for not voting Trump. For one, it had to do with having a clear conscience. I wanted to be able to say, if Trump did something really bad, “I stood on principle and did not vote for a man whose character I do not approve.” But what does that really say about me? Am I such an exemplar of all that is holy that the biggest tarnish to my virtue would be casting a vote for Trump? Would that be the biggest charge levied against me by the Accuser? Hardly. I realized with a bit of a shock that this reason for not voting Trump was merely a virtue signal. ‘Look at me—I’m a good person; I didn’t even vote for Trump!’ This was doubly true of voting for a 3rd party candidate I was 100% positive had no chance of winning. Why do that? To show how good I am? To show my displeasure with the system, rather than working with it as best I could? Again, this was mere virtue signaling. Who was I showing, and why? I didn’t like the answers.And certainly if I did not vote for Trump because his character and morality disqualifies him, or a 3rd party because other than ’sending a message’ (and signaling my virtue) it was worthless, Biden was no answer, either. So my options really were vote (for anyone) or don’t vote at all.So what if I just didn’t vote? Abstained? Would this be the truly virtuous route? Again, I had plausible denial. “I didn’t vote for the bad man.” But then…where would I draw the line for when a candidate is so bad that he doesn’t deserve a vote? Kennedy was all but a folk hero to my parents’ generation, but the more honest accounts that came out long after his death paint a very, very different picture. To some, George W. Bush was a genocidal war criminal. Others saw Bill Clinton as the coup de grace of American Presidential Character. “There is no one righteous, no, not one.” Should I then abstain from all of my country’s elections? Again, what would I say to my Creator? ‘It was bad, but I didn’t have anything to do with it; I’m a good person. I didn’t vote!’ I believe the Creator would say, “You live in a messy, sloppy, sinful world where even there I am present. You thought that by doing nothing—by not voting for someone who despite his own wickedness could be my instrument to help protect my church, who despite his own hypocrisy was willing to protect my unborn children, who despite his petty nature would protect the families that worship me—that this would be accredited unto you as some great righteousness? As though I do not every day use wicked men like you, even in your sin, to accomplish my ends?”This seemed unlikely. I don’t view Donald Trump as some great leader, and my opinion of his Christianity, though I will never condemn a man in absolute terms because I do not know his heart and his struggles, is even worse than that. I don’t like our ridiculous two-party system and the myriad corruption that goes with it. But it is what we have, and there are choices, and I can act within this imperfect system with imperfect candidates, or I can rest on my “virtue” by doing nothing. And I am not so confident in my virtue that I think that is enough to rest on before my Creator.I don’t like Trump. If there were any other candidate with any chance at winning that supported—or at least didn’t disdain—Christian values, I would vote for them. But he is one of exactly two candidates with any hope of winning the presidency, and the only one whose party is not openly hostile toward the Church. If I do nothing, I have no right to find respite in my self-perceived virtue as things continue to deteriorate. I do not believe it is enough, before God or man, to say, “At least I was principled when given a choice to vote for something, and I did nothing.” I believe the church in this country will continue to decline. Christianity’s influence will deteriorate. We will be persecuted. But if the Persian Cyrus could be an instrument of God’s will as regards the Jews, certainly even Trump can serve God whether or not he follows Him. If Daniel could faithfully serve Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus “in good faith”, is it really a reflection of my personal virtue to vote for an imperfect man when it benefits my people? Should I be so shocked and skeptical that the moral will of God could be served by a ‘gentile’, ‘infidel’ ‘king’?This isn’t some justification or claim that God wants Trump to be president, or commanded me to vote for him. I am doing my best to vote according to what I think God would have me do, where I am, with what I have. That’s it. And God certainly permitted for Trump to be the President, so I find it odd that conservatives often act as though this occurrence is somehow in defiance of God’s will, and that He could not possibly work through this.And one last area where I must respectfully suggest you are wrong: your vote, blood-red state or not, matters. I made the same argument you are making in 2016 and withheld my vote. But in 2020, the media and left apparatus having all but openly sanctioned violence in a disputed election, we can scarce afford a close call, electoral/popular vote split. If Biden wins, let him do so without controversy. But I cannot vote for Biden. Thus, I can virtue signal my vote to a 3rd party, or I can hope that Trump, for the 3 reasons I gave, wins. But if he wins, for the sake of peace he must win both the electoral and popular vote. And so, reluctantly, for the sake of preserving the church and protecting the innocent, even though I am in a state Trump will surely win anyway, there I cast my vote.Your vote does matter, Rod, and you know as well as I do that giving it to a 3rd party candidate will not influence the outcome of this election beyond ensuring the popular vote is closer and giving you some moral ‘security blanket’ on which to claim virtue in the future. I don’t say that as an insult; I say that because I was thinking the exact same thing. But I can say that I can stand before my Creator with a clear conscience for my vote, this time. If we are to be exiled in Babylon, we can still work within the Babylonian system for good. Thus I implore you to fight against what could be imminent disaster on November 3, should the election’s outcome be cast into doubt. You and I cannot support Biden and the left, but supporting a 3rd party is little more than putting our self-perceived holiness ahead of the practical reality we’ve been given to work in. Thus I would urge you to vote for Trump.
Here are 2 reasons for you to vote Trump and not 3rd Party despite LA being safely in the Trump column:1 – Given the announced and expected rioting by the Left in the event of a Trump win, it is important that it be as clear a win as possible so as to deprive them of fuel for their fires. So just because he’s going to win LA, your vote still matters in that regard.
2 – Similar to the above, it is important if at all possible for Trump to win the national popular vote to deprive the “down with the Electoral College” bunch of any air as well. The assault on our institutions is a hallmark of the radical Left and it is important to protect all of them that we can.
Your vote always matters!
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